Definitely Not a Green Weenie

I’ve drawn attention several times here to the fine science and policy blog of Roger Pielke Jr at the University of Colorado, but I’ve been remiss in bringing to the attention of Power Line readers an equally worthy blog of another environmental writer who departs frequently and pointedly from the party line: journalist Keith Kloor, whose Collide-A-Scape blog is definitely worth bookmarking and following on a regular basis. (You can and should also follow Keith on Twitter @keithkloor). Keith is a long-time environmental journalist who was an editor for several years at Audubon magazine, and has published in Science, Smithsonian, and elsewhere. Nowadays he freelances from New York and teaches journalism at NYU.

Keith is neither a climate skeptic nor the complete critic of environmentalism that I am, but like Andy Revkin at the New York Times he shoots straight on the issues, frequently calls out environmentalists for their distortions, hypocrisies, and short-sightedness, and whacks the media for sensationalism. I think it is possible that Keith is the originator of the wonderfully useful phrase “climate porn” to describe the overhyping of climate scares by the climateers and their sycophants in the media. Wish I had thought of that! As he says at the end of this post about the dubious legacy of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (50 years old now), “The world’s complex environmental issues demand open minds, fresh perspectives, and less growling.” Needless to say, Keith often provokes less than friendly responses from the environmentally correct.

His latest post a couple days ago gets the energy story of the moment just right, namely, that we are in the early innings of a renaissance of hydrocarbon energy (oil, gas, coal) that is going to run over environmentalists like a (diesel-powered) freight train. And via Twitter today he brings to our attention a tart commentary of the state climatologist of Texas, debunking the distorted claim promoted by a NOAA press release that last summer’s heat wave in Texas was made twenty times worse by greenhouse gases, which naturally the media dutifully reported. And people wonder if our government science agencies are politicized?